So hopefully not cliche American in Paris stuff because hey, if you're not Adam Gopnik, then why try?

mardi, septembre 20, 2005

Movin' On Up

I think if I were looking for work in Paris, I would learn to be an escalator repairman. Because I swear to god at least twenty of those things are broken at any given moment in the city. It's the damnedest thing.

The one leading from the metro station to the plaza where I work (or vice versa) is broken at least half of the time, which in my morning or evening stupor, I tend to not notice until I have heavily placed one foot on the first step, making that tell-tale thump, and nearly falling on my face to realize the thing isn't moving.

I remember in college one of my eight roommates had never been on an escalator in her life. (Small town Wisconsin, what can you say?) I thought that was so fucked up and weird. But I was a snot then. And, (have I mentioned?) very fucking cold.

Then there is the mall - yes, the mall- that I walk through every day to get to the metro station to go to work. Those escalators are broken half the time, too. Once, I was wearing some nice new shoes I had bought whose heels happened to fit snugly into the grooves of the escalator steps. When the escalator reached the bottom floor to deposit me on solid ground, I stepped off, and heard "pop! pop!" as the rubber soles came off the bottom of my stilettos one by one, and I was left standing on two nicely adorned nails to grudgingly click-clack my way to work.